An excellent, balanced critique of the emerging church here.
Quotes:
"...from my experience in and reading of the emerging church, there is no
reason to assume that emergers deny any essential doctrine of the
Christian faith."
and
"In sum, hard postmodernism should be seen
as a threat. It is not possible to be a hard postmodernist and be a
Christian. Soft postmodernism on the other hand presents the church
with many lost virtues of grace and irenics (theology done peaceably).
For this we can be thankful. But we must guard the truths of Scripture
with the conviction that the evidence has presented. Our traditions may
or may not be wrong, but that is for the evidence to decide. There
also are non-essentials that need to be spoken about with conviction,
even if we might be wrong in the end. In short, let us be balanced in
our understanding of the issues on the table and let us not lose the
conviction that the truths of Scripture produce."
Also, Sally Morganthaler has a must read article on her movement/change in understanding since writing Worship Evangelism on the Allelon site, here.
Quote: "Conference organizers were confused. They wondered what had happened to
me. Where was the worship evangelism warrior? Where was the formula?
Where was the pep talk for all those people who were convinced that
trading in their traditional service for a contemporary upgrade would
be the answer? I don't have to tell you this. The 100-year-old
congregation that's down to 43 members and having a hard time paying
the light bill doesn't want to be told that the "answer" is living life
with the people in their neighborhoods. Relationships take time, and
they need an attendance infusion now.
I understood their dilemma, and secretly, I wished I had a magic
bullet. But I didn't. And I wasn't going to give them false hope. Some
newfangled worship service wasn't going to save their church, and it
wasn't going to build God's kingdom. It wasn't going to attract the
strange neighbors who had moved into their communities or the
generations they had managed to ignore for the last 39 years."
I say all of this as someone who would call themselves "emergent":
The same is true of both the emergent and postmodern ideaology -as a corrective (to fundamentalism or modernism) they're great, on their own, they're much weaker. The problem with fundamentalism and modernism is that they both claimed to have all the answers. The way that the emergents and postmodernists act as a corrective is by admitting they don't even know all the questions.
However, both emergents and postmodernists can get so keen on humility and mystery that they become cagey and overly ironic. Everything could be true, no one really knows anything for sure. This is the complaint of the fundamentalist and the modernist against the emergent and the postmodernist.
The problem with the fundamentalist and modernist is that they think they know everything and they're sure they can prove it. The emergents and postmodernists were a welcome and necessary response to such an arrogant and outlandish stance.
However, the emergent and the postmodernist too often avoid any talk of anything true. We can get quiet and even shifty when asked about what we know. This is the mistake the emergents too often make. We've overcorrected as correctives almost always do. We make the mistake of acting like we don't know anything simply because we don't know everything.
Posted by: Kester Smith | September 05, 2007 at 02:16 PM
"...the 'answer' is living life with the people in their neighborhoods."
On our very first visit to the church we just started attending, the rector gave a sermon about the various ministries of the church. She exhorted the congregation to find ways to get more involved in the community, to make the church family a good neighbor.
This really is the 150-year-old church with an aging congregation of which Sally M. speaks. And yes, they have added a contemporary music service on Sunday evenings. But they haven't compromised on fundamental things, and I think that's good. Reaching out to the community is a much better sort of evangelism, I think.
Posted by: Susanna | September 05, 2007 at 08:05 PM
Agreed. Too many churches are asking how the cities they're in can make their church a better church, instead of asking how their church can make the city a better city. Outreach needs to look less like the weekly door to door and more like a daily inbreaking.
Posted by: Kester Smith | September 07, 2007 at 05:45 PM
Here's a great sermon, sort of related.
Making a pilgrimage means setting out in a particular direction, travelling towards a destination. This gives a beauty of its own even to the journey and to the effort involved. Among the pilgrims of Jesus’s genealogy there were many who forgot the goal and wanted to make themselves the goal. Again and again, though, the Lord called forth people whose longing for the goal drove them forward, people who directed their whole lives towards it. The awakening of the Christian faith, the dawning of the Church of Jesus Christ was made possible, because there were people in Israel whose hearts were searching – people who did not rest content with custom, but who looked further ahead, in search of something greater: Zechariah, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, Mary and Joseph, the Twelve and many others. Because their hearts were expectant, they were able to recognize in Jesus the one whom God had sent, and thus they could become the beginning of his worldwide family. The Church of the Gentiles was made possible, because both in the Mediterranean area and in those parts of Asia to which the messengers of Jesus Christ travelled, there were expectant people who were not satisfied by what everyone around them was doing and thinking, but who were seeking the star which could show them the way towards Truth itself, towards the living God.
We too need an open and restless heart like theirs. This is what pilgrimage is all about. Today as in the past, it is not enough to be more or less like everyone else and to think like everyone else. Our lives have a deeper purpose. We need God, the God who has shown us his face and opened his heart to us: Jesus Christ.
Posted by: Lisa | September 08, 2007 at 06:55 AM
In all, I appreciate the quote. All except the first line: "In sum, hard postmodernism should be seen as a threat. It is not possible to be a hard postmodernist and be a Christian."
Really? So is http://www.ignite.cd/blogs/Pete/index.cfm>Pete Rollins not a Christian?
I see Christian faith as center-set--are we moving closer or further from Jesus? And I see postmodernism as sufficiently elastic and "in process" to where terms like "hard" and "soft" postmodernism only make sense as labels coming from the outside. We don't all gotta be like Pete, but he is someone who is thoroughly postmodern--not as part of some kinda "strategy" to "reach" anyone. But from within that habitat, he challenges and encourages my faith. Same as http://www.jackmiles.com>Jack Miles, but I understand if he wigs some people out.
Posted by: Mike Morrell | September 15, 2007 at 08:48 PM